1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a method for patterning a flexible substrate, and in particular, to a method for patterning a flexible substrate by locally changing the adhesion force at an interface between a release layer and a flexible substrate.
2. Description of the Related Art
Flexible displays are popularly applied to portable electronic products due to their sturdiness, light weights, and thin structures. Additionally, flexible displays provide designers with greater degrees of freedom for designing with different shapes or curvatures.
For fabricating flexible display panels, a plurality of panels defined on a large-sized substrate is usually fabricated by processes of patterning a release layer formed of organic materials on a glass carrier. Next, a large-sized flexible substrate is coated on the patterned release layer. Next, the large-sized flexible substrate and the carrier are cut for separation into a plurality of small-sized flexible substrates. The cut flexible substrates have good adhesion with the glass carrier.
The conventional processes of patterning the release layer usually comprise an evaporation, laser patterning process, photolithography process or reactive ion etching (RIE). The evaporation process with a mask disposed on a carrier can directly form various independent release layer patterns. However, if the mask has poor adaptation with the carrier during the evaporation process, the release layer patterns fabricated by the evaporation process may diffuse and connect to each other. The laser process or photolithography process can prevent the release layer patterns from diffusing and connecting to each other. However, the laser patterning process and photolithography process would have low throughput. Specifically, an etched area of the patterned release layer by laser bombardment may easily generate particles, wherein the release layer has a poor profile. Fabrication yield therefore suffers from a contamination problem. The RIE process for patterning the release layer can prevent the contamination problem and improve throughput. However, the RIE process needs to use a photolithography process and higher process temperature; thereby decreasing fabrication yield. The conventional mask patterning process is used for patterning a release layer to prevent plasma etching problems. However, the patterned release layer has broken edges and the patterned release layer may be pulled up by masks.
Thus, a method for patterning a flexible substrate is provided.